Volkswagen will offer U.S. owners of vehicles with rigged diesel engines $5,000 apiece, according to a plan the embattled German automaker is reportedly preparing.

The deal, which is expected to cost VW just over $1 billion, could be disclosed as early as tomorrow when the carmaker is expected to appear before a federal judge in San Francisco. But VW is not believed to yet have a plant to fix those diesels, as it was supposed to put together by April 21st, according to reports in both the German newspaper Die Welt and on the Associated Press wire service.

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VW is facing more than 500 lawsuits filed on behalf of diesel owners in the wake of revelations it had equipped its vehicles with a so-called “defeat device,” software designed to detect when those cars were undergoing emissions tests and then modify engine operations to reduce levels of smog-causing oxides of nitrogen. Almost 550,000 of those vehicles were sold in the U.S., with 11 million sold worldwide.

VW officials initially thought the scandal would have a minimal financial impact.

Already facing more than 500 lawsuits in the U.S., Volkswagen has been hit with two new legal actions that could seriously compound the problems it is facing in the wake of revelations it cheated on diesel emissions tests.

One suit, filed in Germany by major institutional investors, seeks nearly $3.6 billion due to the lost value in Volkswagen shares which have plunged by a third since the scandal broke last September. The other new legal action was initiated by a former VW employee who claims he was fired after trying to prevent the deletion of data connected to emissions test cheating.

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The latter suit could prove particularly problematic as Volkswagen is under criminal investigation in several countries, including both the U.S. and Germany, and was ordered to preserve potential evidence related to its admitted rigging of diesel tests.

Some older VW diesel models may not be completely fixed, says a California regulator.

Volkswagen has just two weeks to deliver an acceptable solution to its dirty diesel problem, according to the orders of a federal judge. But regulators in California are starting to worry that the maker might not be able to come up with a satisfactory fix short of scrapping tens of thousands of those vehicles.

As a result, a senior official with the California Air Resources Board says the organization is considering whether to let those vehicles continue to operate while falling short of both state and federal clean air mandates.

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“Our goal has been to fix the vehicles and return them to their certified configuration as expeditiously as possible,” CARB enforcement chief Todd Sax said during a legislative hearing in Sacramento. “Unfortunately, this may not be possible.”

Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller has been trying to contain the diesel scandal.

German prosecutors have now put 17 people under investigation as they widen their probe of Volkswagen’s diesel emissions cheating scandal.

The number has grown in recent weeks from the initial six employees prosecutors say they were targeting – and now goes well beyond the “handful of engineers” VW’s senior executives have long said were behind the cheating.

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Separately, VW CEO Matthias Mueller on Tuesday said he expects the scandal to result in “substantial and painful” financial damage before it is fully resolved. The maker has already set aside more than $7 billion to cover those costs while also setting up a credit line for as much as $20 billion more.

A federal judge in San Francisco is giving Volkswagen a month to come up with an acceptable fix that would bring 600,000 polluting diesel vehicles into compliance with U.S. emissions laws.

The announcement by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer comes as the maker begins repairs of more than 10 million other diesel vehicles it sold outside of the United States. But so far, the German maker hasn’t been able to come up with a solution that will satisfy the Environmental Protection Agency, which first revealed last September that VW had cheated on diesel emissions tests.

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“Six months is long enough” to come up with a solution, said Judge Breyer, who will oversee hundreds of lawsuits filed against the German maker that were recently consolidated before his court. “This is an ongoing problem.”

Volkswagen has set a deadline of Nov. 30 for whistleblowers to offer up any information they may have without corporate reprisals.

Volkswagen AG set the end of the month as the deadline for whistleblowers to come forth with any information they may have about the cheating on diesel emissions tests.

According to Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the deadline is designed to coax potential employees with that knowledge to come forth quickly with the promise that doing so won’t spell the end of their careers with the automaker.

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VW hired two U.S. companies – Deloitte, an advisory firm, and Jones Day, a high profile law firm – to help investigate how the problem happened. Several engineers installed software on three generations of diesel engines to change the emissions outputs when a vehicle was in test mode. When it was not, it would improve the performance parameters of the powerplants: at the expense of emissions. (more…)